Fast striper action looms just around corner

Saturday, May 28, 2005

By Ken Allen

Maine's striped bass produces fishing action galore in June, and folks in central Maine take advantage because these fish ascend the Kennebec as far as Waterville. Stripers are also swarming in tidal waters from Kittery to Penobscot Bay during the sixth month, putting them within short driving distance for most of Maine's population.

While lesser mortals content themselves with schoolies splashing the surface and making themselves easy targets, savvy anglers find cow and bull stripers hanging around structures 10 to 20 feet down. This coming month ranks as a top one for landing huge striped bass.

June may excite veteran, saltwater anglers in this state, but make no mistake. These migratory game fish first arrive in May, so they are here already. The good times just roll harder in June after waters warm.

Even this spring, despite raw, seemingly endless rain, stripers swam into Saco Bay the second week of May and ran up the Saco River. This spring rite drew southern Maine anglers onto the water to meet the roaming schools -- business as usual.

Before Harry Vanderweide, of Augusta, became an ardent turkey hunter, he found school stripers in downtown Augusta each May 10 for several years. He looked forward to this date with the same anticipation as he does the opening day of deer season.

I suspect stripers kept the same schedule in 2005. Early May's Kennebec striped bass might winter in the river -- say around Merrymeeting Bay -- insuring they show up on time. Vanderweide depended on May 10.

When the Yankee Atomic Power plant was generating electricity beside the Sheepscot in the last century, striped bass stayed in the river year round. Fisheries biologists claimed the warm-water effluent held them through the white season. That claim sounds logical, but Lew Flagg, a fisheries biologist with the Department of Marine Resources, once told me that stripers wintered in the Sheepscot during the 19th century, according to sales records from commercial fishermen.

Striped bass in Maine excite anglers because school stripers weigh from two to seven pounds and certainly larger. A 7-pound schoolie is heavier than any salmonid that most people land in Maine during a lifetime, and anglers may tangle with a 20-pound bass or larger on any outing.

I am a fly rodder so think "fly fishing" when it comes to stripers. In my opinion, a newbie fly fisher should chase this anadromous species because striped bass are cooperative to the core and offer splendid practice in playing fish. After battling a bunch of 5- to 7-pound schoolies, a 4-pound brook trout or 6-pound salmon seems less daunting to a novice. Kids also love the action with such salty brutes.

When I was growing up in Windsor, no one in my circle of acquaintances fished for stripers. However, a wonderful writer first introduced me to this fish through his columns in Maine Times. John Cole waxed poetically about striper fishing in Merrymeeting Bay and started me thinking, "I gotta' try that!"

However, a natural phenomenon brought most of us in my age bracket to the salt. In about 1974, bluefish blitzed the Maine coast for the first time in memory, and folks headed to tidal waters in hordes. That first summer, it was difficult to find a saltwater rod and reel in Maine sports shops because they sold like proverbial hotcakes. Naturally, we also caught stripers with the marauding blues, and none of us minded. No single event in the history of the state spurred saltwater fishing so much as the first year of the bluefish.

Because of over-harvesting from commercial fishermen in spawning grounds along the Eastern Seaboard, our striper fishery declined. In the 1980s, I fished several years in a row without catching a single striper, but bluefish action proved phenomenal in that decade.

Strict regulations on commercially harvesting stripers brought them back in the 1990s, though, and the rest is history -- for now. Commercial fishing is an ever-present threat to the future of recreational striper fishing.

The classic, traditional images of striper fishing show surf casters or fly rodders on sand beaches at dawn or dusk, facing huge waves driven by a northeast wind. Fortunately, Maine has enough sand beaches to fulfill this daydream, but other than Popham at the mouth of the Kennebec, folks must travel to Portland and south to find such habitat in abundance.

Check out Maps 1, 2 and 3 in DeLorme's The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer. Sand beaches are depicted by a small, red icon of a swimmer. If the beach is in a state park, Page 7 tells whether you can fish there or not.

If you scout out any beach at dusk or particularly dawn, then you'll see other striper anglers, who can give newcomers an idea of how and where to fish. Most beaches have casters in the off hours, but the key to accessing the water is finding parking, which often lies blocks away from a beach.

Folks in the Augusta-Waterville-Gardiner area have plenty of striper fishing, and I have wiled away many dawns, casting beside the old Republican Building in downtown Hallowell. Newbies can see these schooling game fish splashing, giving them an idea of where to fish.

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer. To reach him, send e-mail to KAllyn800@aol.com